


in darkest night

by crickets



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 09:24:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/453921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crickets/pseuds/crickets





	in darkest night

**ONE**  
After the accident, drugs are one of the only things that can stop the nightmares.

In them, it's Elena who's in the water and it's their parents who somehow make it to the surface -- without her. She's stuck in the car and she's drowning and Jeremy is standing right there, at the banks of the river, watching her, her fists pounding on the window, the water filling the vehicle as it sinks deeper and deeper. In his dreams, he can almost reach out and touch her; he can almost save her. 

But the thing about these dreams is that he doesn't even try, he doesn't even scream her name out loud.

He just watches her as she sinks under, Miranda and Greyson standing over his shoulder, soaking wet and nodding, as if everything's okay.

_As if this is what needs to happen._

So, what does he do? He smokes up, gets high, _whatever_ ; whatever it takes to make the nightmares go away, even if it pisses her off. It's all worth it if it can make the things that he's feeling weigh a little lighter on his chest.

Some nights, Elena hears him, thrashing in his bed, and she crosses the hall to his room and crawls into the bed with him, slipping her arm around his middle. "Jer," she whispers. "You're having another dream." 

And this is the other thing that keeps the dragons at bay; his sister cuddled up against him, warm and breathing and alive.

Jeremy, pulls her close, lets himself fall asleep, dreamlessly. 

Some days he thinks that maybe if he'd lost her in that accident instead of their parents, it would have been worse, it would have been unbearable. 

Most days? _He knows it._

 

 

 **TWO**  
When Elena wakes up, she's a different person.

"I'm not a person anymore, Jer," she'll point out to him.

"Whatever," Jeremy says, rolling his eyes, reaching out and pushing her shoulder playfully. "Are too." 

The Salvatores don't come around for a little while. And really, if you ask Jeremy? That's not necessarily a bad thing. Elena has almost run out of fingers on which to count how many vampires she's loved or trusted or cared about in her life, but that doesn't change the fact that she never really wanted to be one, that she had _plans_ ; plans that will never amount to anything now. She needs some time alone, with her family. With her self. 

But even Jeremy can see that it's killing her; the isolation. 

"So when are you going to forgive them?" he asks her one night, her glass full of pig's blood from the butcher, his glass full of milk. 

"Forgive who for what?" 

"Whatever it is that you're holding against them. And you _know_ who."

Elena just looks at him, her face set in stone.

"I'm serious," he tells her. "It's not like anybody did this to you. You would have _died_. I'm _glad_ you're still alive, vampire or not. I don't have anybody else, Elena." 

Elena is out of her chair in a flash and her hand goes around his neck, pinning him to the wall.

"Shut up," she hisses, because this is the part that kills her. And this is the part she knows is true, will always be true. Jeremy needs her. He'll always need her.

"Aren't you glad?" he asks when she loosens her grip. "Just to be alive?" 

Elena closes her eyes, wills her fangs to retreat. 

"Honestly?" she says. "No, I'm not."

 

  
 **THREE**  
The first time she feeds from him, Jeremy is hard. 

Elena is beaten and weak and he offers her his neck. Then, she's on top of him and arching against him as she literally sucks the life from his veins and he can feel his cock stiffen against her. 

Elena notices, she has to, but she doesn't stop. Instead, she drinks her fill, drinks until he has to call her name and push her off of him, his hand going to the wound at his neck, his head throbbing as he curls into the fetal position on his side. 

She wipes her mouth against the back of her hand, leans over him and bites her wrist, offering it to him. 

"Just a sip," she says. "To help the pain." 

Jeremy doesn't drink, and the two of them never talk about it. 

 

 

 **FOUR**  
Elena is not the one who turns him.

Sure, that's what they tell people; because it's easier that way. 

( _Because anything else is unthinkable._ ) 

But the truth is that Elena refuses him when he comes to her with tears in his eyes, telling her that he doesn't want to be alone, that she is the only family he has left, that he loves her too much to die without her. He puts his human hands on her strong shoulders and shakes her violently, trying to make her understand. Elena strikes him hard across the cheekbone with the back of her hand, blood spilling from the gash her ring leaves behind. 

Her fangs are sprung and her eyes flood with red and she doesn't reach out to help him off the ground. 

"There's no such thing as family anymore," she tells him. "Everybody's alone." 

Months later, after Jeremy's taken matters into his own hands, he turns up with dried blood at the corner of his lips and a hunger in his belly that will never be sated. Elena reaches out, touches the mark on his cheek, the one that she put there. 

"You'll have this forever," she tells him. 

_And she's not just talking about the scar._

 

 **FIVE**  
The first time they fuck, it's in Amsterdam, or what _used to be_ Amsterdam anyway. 

Jeremy lifts her skirt and thinks maybe it's been several dozen lifetimes since he first imagined this. But that's not true, it only feels like it. It only seems like it's true in his heart. And that's close enough. 

They're in an alleyway and this is after all the great wars and the world is a changed place, and neither of them even bat an eye when a group of girls in dirty dresses and unkept hair pass by, giggling. 

Nobody knows them here. _Nobody cares_. 

Even if they did? They _still_ wouldn't care. 

Siblings, cousins, vampires, mates. 

_It all comes out in the wash_.

Elena's fangs sink into his neck when she comes, and he's reminded of a time so very long ago when he was still human and they were still in Mystic Falls and he couldn't bring himself to put his lips to her wrist out of fear of wanting more.

_He's not afraid anymore._

Jeremy closes his eyes, _calls out her name._

 

_fin._


End file.
